{"id":376847,"date":"2018-09-11T05:52:43","date_gmt":"2018-09-11T04:52:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/how-things-fall-apart-lewrockwell\/"},"modified":"2018-09-11T05:52:43","modified_gmt":"2018-09-11T04:52:43","slug":"how-things-fall-apart-lewrockwell","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/how-things-fall-apart-lewrockwell\/","title":{"rendered":"How Things Fall Apart &#8211; LewRockwell"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t                            \t<!-- S3 Cache --><!-- S3:S3:Non-Original -->\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<p><i>A funny thing happens on the way to stabilizing things by\u00a0doing more of what\u2019s failed: the system becomes even more unstable, brittle and fragile.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><b>A peculiar faith in pushing extremes to new heights has taken hold in official circles over the past decade:<\/b>\u00a0when past extremes push the system to the breaking point and everything starts unraveling, the trendy solution in official circles is to double-down, pushing even greater extremes. If this fails, then the solution is to double-down again. And so on.<\/p>\n<p>So when uncreditworthy borrowers default on stupendous loans they were never qualified to receive, the solution is to extend even more stupendous sums of new credit so the borrower can roll over the old debt and make a few interest payments for appearance\u2019s sake (also known as \u201csaving face.\u201d)<\/p>\n<p><b>A funny thing happens on the way to stabilizing things by\u00a0<i>doing more of what\u2019s failed<\/i>:<\/b>\u00a0the system becomes even more unstable, brittle and fragile.<\/p>\n<p><b>Central banks and states have latched onto a solution akin to a perpetual-motion machine:<\/b>\u00a0the solution to all problems is simple:\u00a0<b>print or borrow another trillion.<\/b>\u00a0If the problem persists, repeat the print\/borrow another trillion until it goes away.<\/p>\n<p><b>Consider China, a nation (like many others) dependent on a vast, never-ending expansion of credit.<\/b>\u00a0So what happens when defaults start piling up in the shadow banking system? The central bank\/state authorities conjure up a couple trillion yuan (a.k.a.\u00a0<i>liquidity<\/i>) so defaults go away: here, Mr. Bad-Risk-Default, is government-issued credit so you can pay off your defaulted private-sector loan. Everybody saves face, private losses have been transferred to the public sector\/state, problem solved.<span class=\"amazon-element-wrapper-custom align-right last-count\"><br \/>\n<span class=\"amazon-element-med-image\"><span class=\"amazon-image-wrapper\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Money-Work-Unchained-Charles-Smith\/dp\/1981226583?SubscriptionId=AKIAI63WS3YGA3Y5U2QA&amp;tag=lrc18-20&amp;linkCode=xm2&amp;camp=2025&amp;creative=165953&amp;creativeASIN=1981226583\" target=\"_blank\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com\/images\/I\/41F1BzzX4BL.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"amazon-image amazon-image-medium\"\/><\/a><\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span class=\"amazon-element-title\"><span class=\"appip-title\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Money-Work-Unchained-Charles-Smith\/dp\/1981226583?SubscriptionId=AKIAI63WS3YGA3Y5U2QA&amp;tag=lrc18-20&amp;linkCode=xm2&amp;camp=2025&amp;creative=165953&amp;creativeASIN=1981226583\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow\">Money and Work Unchained<\/a><\/span><\/span><br \/>\n<span class=\"amazon-element-author\">Charles Hugh Smith<\/span><br \/>\n<span class=\"amazon-element-lowest-used\"><span class=\"appip-lowest-used\"><span class=\"appip-label...<\/span><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lewrockwell.com\/2018\/09\/charles-hugh-smith\/how-things-fall-apart-extremes-arent-stable\/\">Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A funny thing happens on the way to stabilizing things by\u00a0doing more of what\u2019s failed: the system becomes even more unstable, brittle and fragile. A peculiar faith in pushing extremes to new heights has taken hold in official circles over the past decade:\u00a0when past extremes push the system to the breaking point and everything starts [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-376847","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=376847"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/376847\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=376847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=376847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=376847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}